The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and other civil rights groups submitted a letter to University of California (UC) President Mark Yudof, pressing him to consider the chilling effect of efforts to target Arab, Muslim and other students advocating for Palestinian rights on UC campuses. Read more here.
The letter urges the UC President to take affirmative steps to protect pro-Palestinian speech on campus. Students who advocate for Palestinian rights must be respected as equal members of the university community, and their viewpoints recognized as valuable contributions to an issue of great public concern. The letter also urges the President to renounce efforts to taint all student activism on Palestine as anti-Semitic, and to correct the mischaracterizations of these students' nonviolent and anti-racist advocacy. CCR and the other signatories will continue to monitor attempts to intimidate Palestinian rights activists on college campuses, and to advocate on their behalf.